When Love Makes You Disappear

For the next 3 weeks, we're going to do something different. This isn't 3 separate stories I'm going to give you. This is just one story that's going to be told from 3 different angles. During week 1, you're going to meet a woman I'll call Veronica. She was married. She was happy. She was the most open person you'll ever meet. She walks into rooms and people light up. She doesn't do walls. She doesn't do games. If she chooses to deal with you, Then she's all in until her husband turned her openness into a weapon. She walked into that marriage without walls, and now she's drowning behind the walls of Jericho that he forced her to build. Her personality is disappearing. Her joy is gone. Her identity— she doesn't even recognize herself anymore. This is what it looks like to be held hostage Inside your own love. In week 2, you meet a woman named Nancy. She had the courage to leave. She moved out. She got her own place, her own car, her own life. On paper, she's free. But 2 years later, she still won't file for divorce. She's standing in the doorway, one foot out, one foot in. He drops by her house at 2 and 3 AM, not to rekindle the relationship, only to stay attached Intimately, sexually. She still accepts money from him sometimes because she's hoping he'll change. This is what happens when you escape the prison but can't close the door behind you. In week 3, we flip the mirror, not to blame men, but to show you that men are hostages too. A man I'll call Marcus has been friend-zoned his entire adult life. Women like him as a person but never feel that He says he wants a certain type of woman physically, but he's never asked himself what he wants emotionally. Because going deeper means going back to a place he swore he'd never visit again. Something happened to him as a child that changed how he sees men, how he sees himself, and how he shows up in relationships. And until he faces it, he'll keep dating from the surface because the surface feels safe. This is what it looks like when trauma holds you hostage with Without you even knowing it, three people, three prisons, three weeks, three clients whose story I'm gonna share with you. This is the Held Hostage miniseries, and if you've ever lost yourself inside a relationship, if you've ever left but couldn't let go, if you've ever wondered how did I miss the signs, these three weeks are for you. I'm Shamsuddin, and this is the Intact Life. Let's break the hostage cycle.

First they wanna see me fall, see me break, see me crawl. Never wanna see me whole, truth untold. But now I speak, so you gonna feel it all. I'm the presence in the room, I don't just speak. I command your presence, demand excellence. Breathe fire with reckless reverence, planted in the best soil, deep like ancestral truth. Tried to form a plan, but you could never reroute me. I'm still here, congratulate me, survived it all. Wore it like a suit and walked through hell with a heaven-bound boot. That's the same path you gonna walk, from broken to unbreakable, from loss to legacy. Talk intact life, we mapped the journey. 7 loops, 5 roads. 5 pillars, no attorney. Break your loop, build your love. This is how we rise above. Shamsuddin Hakim, Intag Life Podcast. Welcome to the session.

Let's go.

Intag Life.

Welcome back. I'm Shamsuddin. If you've been with me through weeks 1 through 3, you've heard me talk about love patterns. The cycles we repeat in relationships. We've covered the performer, the chaser, closure addiction. But today we go deeper than we've ever gone, because today I'm introducing you to something I've never talked about on this podcast. What happens when the relationship is so toxic that it doesn't just activate one love pattern, it activates 3? See, most people have a primary love pattern. That's the cycle that feels normal to your nervous system. The chaser chases, the fortress builds walls, the settler stays too long. We all have our thing. But there are relationships so destructive that they create patterns you didn't even have before you walked in. Relationships where you walk in as one person and walk out as That's what happened to the woman I'm going to introduce you to this week. Her name is Veronica. When Veronica walked into her marriage, she had zero walls. Not one. No walls. Zero. She was the most open person in every room. If she chose to deal with you, she was all in. She led with her heart first. She didn't play no games. She didn't put on no performance. She was a real woman. It was just her. And within a few years, she was drowning. Not because she changed, because he changed her. And that's what we're talking about today. When love makes you disappear. Before I tell you Veronica's story on Wednesday, I need you to understand something. There's a word that gets thrown around a lot. Narcissist. All of a sudden, everybody's ex is a narcissist now. Every person who hurt you is a narcissist. Social media has turned it into a buzzword. But real narcissistic conditioning, that's not a buzzword, that's a prison. Narcissistic conditioning is when someone systematically teaches you to question your reality, your value, and your sanity so that you become dependent on them for validation. And they do it in stages. Stage number 1 is the idealization stage. At the beginning, they're perfect. They mirror you. Whatever you love, they love. Whatever you value, they value. They make you feel like you've finally found the one, the person who truly gets you, and you fall hard because it feels real. But they weren't falling for you. They were studying you, learning your needs, your insecurities, your patterns, so they could use them later. Stage 2, the devaluation stage. Once you're in, Once you're committed, married, moved in, whatever the situation is, the mask comes off. Not all at once, that would be too obvious. So they take their time and they let it happen very slowly during the relationship as it grows and gets stronger. They remove more of the mask. A comment here, a criticism there. They start making you feel like you're too much, too happy, too loud, too open to yourself. And the most The dangerous part, they're amazing to everyone else. At work, they're perfect. With friends, they're the life of the party. With family, so charming, so wonderful, he's so everything, so great. But at home, with you, he's cold, dismissive, punishing. And when you try to tell someone that he's not who you think he is, they don't believe you because they only see the mask. So So now you're being gassed up by your partner and your community, and you start thinking, maybe it is me. Maybe I'm the problem. Stage 3, the disappearing. This is where it gets tragic. You start changing, not because you want to, but because it's the only way to survive. You stop going out because he gets mad before you leave. You stop speaking up because he punishes you for having opinions. You stop being happy because your joy triggers his insecurity. You start writing your feelings instead of speaking them because talking to him is like talking to a wall. And slowly, the person everyone loves disappears. Not because she left, because she got erased. And that's when the love patterns activate. Now here's what makes Veronica's case different from anything we've covered on this podcast. Most people I coach have one primary love pattern, maybe 2. But Veronica, she had 3 running simultaneously, and none of them were hers. Let me explain. See, a primary pattern— pattern number 1 is the performer. The performer earns love through performance. They don't just give love, they audition for it. Every day is a performance review, and they're constantly adjusting, shrinking, overcompensating to earn approval. In a healthy relationship, Performers learn to stop performing and just be. But in a narcissistic relationship, the performer pattern gets weaponized. Because the narcissist needs you to perform. They need you to manage their emotions, to predict their moves, to shrink yourself so they can expand. Veronica became a performer in her own home. Not on stage, but in her own living room. Every day was an audition. Am I small enough today? Am I quiet enough? Will he be okay when he gets home, or do I need to avoid him? She said it herself, I find myself sitting at home because I didn't want to make him mad. Let me just stay home. That's not a choice, that's a performance. She was performing invisible to survive. Pattern number 2, the fortress. This was a pattern that was activated. Let me explain. Here's where it gets interesting. Veronica is not a natural fortress. She said, and I'm using her exact energy here, I don't go into situations with walls up. If I choose to deal with you, that means I choose to deal with you. This is a woman who lived her entire life without walls. She was open. She was vulnerable. She led with her heart first. But after years of narcissistic conditioning, she said something that broke my heart. She said, he's made me feel like the walls of Jericho. The walls of Jericho. Not just walls, biblical walls. Impenetrable walls. Walls so thick they needed trumpets from God to bring them down. A woman who never had walls in her life is now building Jericho at 44 years old. That's not a personality trait. That's a trauma response. Her husband didn't just hurt her. He changed her architecture, and that's what narcissistic abuse does. It activates patterns you were never supposed to carry. Pattern number 3, the settler. Now, underneath all of that was an underlying pattern called the settler. The settler stays in situations they know aren't right. They see the red flags, they feel the pain, but they convince themselves Maybe it'll get better. Maybe if I try harder. Maybe I'm expecting too much. Veronica knows her marriage is destroying her. She said it. I don't like the person he is making me become. She can see it. She can feel it. But she's still there.

Why?

Because the Performer says, maybe if I perform better, he'll change. The Fortress says, I'll just protect myself and endure. And the settler says, at least I'm not alone. 3 patterns, 3 prisons, 1 woman. And when I ran her through the INTAK framework, when I checked her 5C filter, her chemistry, her character, her compatibility, her capacity, and if he's clean, you know what she scored? 0 out of 5. 0. Not 1, not 2, 0. I wrote in my notes, this isn't a relationship. It's a hostage situation. That's not just a metaphor. That's the diagnosis I gave her. So how do you know if this is happening to you or to someone you love? I'm going to give you 12 signs. If you check 4 or more, you need to pay attention. If you check 8 or more, you might be in a hostage situation and not even know it. Are you ready? Sign number 1: You've stopped doing things that used to make you happy. Not because you lost interest, but because his reaction isn't worth the joy. You find yourself managing his mood before he even gets home— scanning, predicting, adjusting. He's amazing to everyone else— friends, coworkers, strangers— but treats you like a burden in private. You started writing your feelings instead of speaking them because talking to him goes nowhere. 5. You question whether you're the problem, even though deep down you know you're not. 6. Your friends or family have said you're not yourself anymore, and they're right. 7. He sabotages your joy, picks a fight before your birthday, ruins holidays, creates chaos before events he can't control. 8. You've started isolating yourself to avoid conflict. Staying home, turning down invitations, shrinking your world. Number 9, you feel like another shift when he gets home. Not a partner, but a task on his schedule. Number 10, he controls finances, social access, or emotional availability and calls it providing or protecting. Number 11, you build walls for the first time in your life, not because that's who you are, but because it's the only way to survive him. Number 12, you still ask yourself, am I the problem? Even while reading this list. If you checked 4 or more, your love is making you disappear, and the person who's supposed to be your partner is the one holding the eraser. If you checked 8 or more, you're not in a marriage. You are not in a relationship. You are in a hostage situation, and you need someone to tell you what I told Veronica. You are not the problem. You were never the problem. And on Wednesday, I'm going to prove it. Wednesday is episode 8 called Jericho Walls: Veronica's Story. I'm taking you inside the coaching session. You're going to hear how she described her marriage, how she described herself, how she said, my personality is literally drowning. You're going to hear me walk her through all 7 intact steps, and you're going to hear the moment she realized I'm not the problem. I never was. And then Friday, episode 9, Am I the Problem? The Narcissism Test. I'm giving you a framework you can use tonight to determine if your relationship is a partnership or a prison. This is the Held Hostage miniseries. 3 weeks, 3 prisons, and the blueprint to break free from all of them. Now, If you want to go deeper into this series, there's also a companion blog post on theintactlife.com/blog. I'll put the link down in the show notes so you can easily access it. That blog post is going to be for each one of these episodes in this series, and each blog post is going to go deeper into each one of the concepts that we cover in that series. So for this first series, we covered narcissistic conditioning. The blog post goes a lot deeper, and it also provides you with the narcissism test and the questions that you need to ask yourself so that you know if you are the problem or if you're in a narcissistic situation and you're being held hostage. So go ahead and click that link down below. Go deeper, download the resources, and find out. Also, if you want to find out exactly What your 5C is, what your emotional DNA is, identify your love pattern, which ones are running. Then take the ENTTEC Life Assessment. It's $20 to get your full results, or you can get partial results for free. But take it and it's going to give you your 5 pillars, identify your love pattern, and tell you exactly where you're stuck. Veronica scored 4 out of 10 on alignment. But what's your score? Go ahead and click the link in the show notes and take the assessment. Also, I go live on TikTok where I do live assessments at 8 PM. If you want your patterns revealed, then join me. And if you check 4 or more on that list, I can help you figure out what's really going on. So join me for tonight's episode. Now, the most important part is remember to subscribe, share this episode with someone Like it, and remember that you are not the problem, and you never were. And I'll see you on Wednesday. I'm Shamsuddin, and this is Intact Life. When love makes you disappear, we help you find yourself again so that you can be whole, build a love that's strong.

Intact Life.

Ow!

First they wanna see me fall, see me break, see me crawl. Never wanna see me whole. Truth untold, but now I speak, so you gonna feel it all. I'm the presence in the room, I don't just speak. I command your presence, demand excellence. Breathe fire with reckless reverence, planted in the best soil, deep like insects. That's your truth. Try to form a plan, but you could never reroute me. I'm still here, congratulate me. Survived it all, wore it like a suit and walked through hell with a heaven-bound boot. That's the same path you gonna walk. From broken to unbreakable, from loss to legacy. Talkin' 'tak life, we map the journey. 7 loops, 5 modes, 5 pillars. No attorney break your loop. Build your love. This is how we rise above. Shamsidin Hakim, Intag Life Podcast. Welcome to the session. Let's go. Intag Life.